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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

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API Docs for NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day API provides developer documentation for accessing NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day service. It is designed for developers building applications that need to retrieve… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 2 we have checked on their own sites, 2 of them free or with a free tier. API Docs for NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day API launched in 2022; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Image of our universe every day on your Mac 🌌

    2019 · nasapicture.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    View the daily astronomical images provided by NASA

    2021 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Live NASA solar imagery in 12 wavelengths, the moon phase tonight for 200+ cities, and real space weather. Free on iOS and Android. No ads, no signup.

    Apr 2026 · lumara-space.app · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Image recognition API for developers from Google

    2015 · cloudplatform.googleblog.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Weather service and API specialized in astronomy

    2023 · rapidapi.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Automatically downloads and sets the NASA picture of the day (APOD) as your desktop in Ubuntu. - randomdrake/nasa-apod-desktop

    2012 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7NP

    2011 · apod-viewer.heroku.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    APOD▲2

    Your Space Pic Of the Day

    2024 · apod-main.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  9. 9
    Atlas of Spacefree▲770

    Hello HN! Sharing a recent side project of mine, the Atlas of Space, that I built out to explore the Solar System. As a long-time space nerd, I realized recently that I didn't have a good intuition on the scale, speed, and relative orientation of the celestial bodies around us. So over the break I built out a kind of spatial Wikipedia to click around and learn about planets, moons, asteroids, and other bodies orbiting the Sun. The physics is all simulated in the browser using simple Newtonian mechanics. There's a lot left to do from here, including modeling objects in non-Keplerian orbits…

    2025 · atlasof.space · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Official NASA library, searchable by keywords and metadata

    2017 · images.nasa.gov · its alternatives →

  11. 11AA
    Astro App▲291

    I really like Stellarium and SkySafari but I felt like these are primarily geared towards exploring the sky but not so much "here are the long list of things I want to see, when can I see them tonight and where". There's also not really a great option I've found that combines sky object planning + location weather details while still being free so I built this. The UI's heavily inspired by NINAs sky atlas + Robinhood. Right now you can: View the altitude chart of objects and 3D view Create lists of objects of interest View the annual max/min daily altitude of an object to find the best…

    2024 · astro.sshh.io · its alternatives →

  12. 12
    AstraPixelsfree tier, from $5/mo▲267

    ​​A pixel-art solar system at its real current positions.​

    Aug 2026 · astrapixels.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Image Recognition API

    2015 · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    A collection of public APIs for your next project

    2021 · public-apis.io · its alternatives →

  15. 15
    Sunrise▲284

    Beautifully designed calendar app

    2013 · sunrise.am · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Remove background & improve images for marketplaces and apps

    2021 · photoroom.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Auto update your Twitter banner with NASA's Photo of the Day

    2014 · its alternatives →

  18. 18
    Moonshot ▲437

    Track the Artemis II mission from your Mac

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19
    Code NASA▲352

    253 NASA open source software projects

    2016 · code.nasa.gov · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    This is a little hobby project that I hope you enjoy. You can see where the International Space Station is now, with live HD video from NASA, on a realistic 3D globe. The positions of the sun and moon are also accurate, though distances aren't to scale. The clouds are also near-realtime; I span that out into a separate project at https://clouds.matteason.co.uk, where the cloud images I create from EUMETSAT data are freely available. I've got more features almost ready to go, like the ability to turn off all UI, toggleable clouds and turning off the day/night cycle I'd love for…

    2024 · iss.matteason.co.uk · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Tons of astronomy services, one app.

    2022 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22AR
  23. 23SA

    Discover the cosmos by searching the APOD collection, powered by OpenAI text embedding based on the original image descriptions by NASA.

    2023 · searchable-apod.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  24. 24AU

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →